Brianna Bibel, Biochemistry at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory reports, Her dramatic death often overshadows her epic life, but it shouldn’t.

Photo: Matteo Farinella

Why the last? Tension between religious and secular factions seeking
control over the city boiled over in the early 400s, leading to her
violent murder and turning her into a martyr for scientists, pagans, and
atheists.Hypatia’s death is much better recorded than her life - historians aren’t even sure when she was born (sometime around 350 CE). But there is plenty of evidence that Hypatia was a tremendous scholar.If you wanted to learn math and astronomy in Alexandria, it helped if
your dad was Theon, the last known member of Alexandria’s museum (not a
museum in the sense we use the word now but more of a “university”).
Theon taught Hypatia and sought her help with some of his commentaries -
republications of someone else’s work with notes interpreting and
explaining various parts. Commentaries such as these played an important
role in preserving
and advancing ancient Greek works at a time when such works were seen
by many as “pagan” and opposed to Christian ideals. Many historians
believe that at least one of the commentaries attributed to her father,
the third book of Theon’s version of Ptolemy’s Almagest, an astronomical textused widely until the 16th century, was actually written by Hypatia...

Hypatia was a masternetworker
- she had an “in” with many powerful figures in the ancient world,
including the governor of Alexandria, Orestes. This popularity likely
spawned jealousy in archbishop Cyril, already in a foul mood due to a
feud with Orestes over control of the city. Orestes was a Christian, but
he didn’t think the Christian Church should encroach on “civil government.” Cyril, on the other hand, wanted the church to have more control in secular affairs. The argument led to Cyril’s monks trying to assassinate
Orestes, but they only succeeded at putting Orestes on high alert. But
they didn’t have to look far for an easier target - Hypatia regularly
traveled around, giving public lectures proudly espousing “pagan” views.Read more... Source: Massive Science

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Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.